Moving On

- not me, the BBC

Every day last week at about 2.30pm in the afternoon, was a special made-for-TV play, in a series called Moving On

All written by Liverpool playwrights, filmed on Liverpool streets (I even spotted a few purple wheely bins) and most featuring Liverpool actors, produced by Jimmy McGovern.

All were heavily featured in the Liverpool Echo in the run up to last week, so I was keen to watch them.

I didn't watch them as they happened, I watched them this bank holiday weekend making the most of TV On Demand, and after I watched the first one (arguably the best as it happens) the other 4 episodes were most definitely "on demand" as far as I was concerned.

A great series, a great idea, to give local Liverpool people the opportunity to write screen plays, work with the greats, as it says on the BBC website, they were "written by up-and-coming writers and experienced writers, who were all chosen by, and worked closely with, Executive Producer Jimmy McGovern."

The first one, The Rain Has Stopped by Karen Brown, starred Sheila Hancock (yes really!) as a widow of some 10 years who had met a man on holiday in Eastbourne (or somewhere like that) but all hell broke lose when he moved in to the family home with her. Not only was he an unwanted replacement for their father, but he was a Ghurka to boot, Sheila's son called him "Illegal" as in "illegal immigrant", which of course he wasn't and the course of true love ran anything but smooth. Thank heavens for a happy ending.

My other favourite, Dress To Impress by Arthur Ellison was about a young man of 17 who has been secretly dressing as a woman. When his father finds his secret stash of women's lingerie and fripperies, he believes his wife has bought them to wear them for his birthday. When they don't materialise, he believes his wife has been deceiving him with another man and huge family rows ensue. Only when the son, desperate to save his parents' marriage, dresses up in the hidden clothes and comes downstairs to confront them and his own secret, is the family finally able to come back together, after many tears. I was particularly impressed with one scene where the young man is online on a webcam, talking to another transvestite young man about his passion for cross-dressing. He tells his friend that it may be a phase and that he might grow out of, the friend says "How long have you been doing it?" and he replies "About 10 years". "A bit too long to be a phase" comes the reply. It is sympathetically done and I think the LGBT community will be pleased with it. It is anything but sleazy.

Speaking as someone who can let days go by without turning on the "goggle box", I would say we need more drama of this calibre.

Another reason to be proud of Liverpool.